I've received an award at the World Government Summit for our work in blockchain, developed innovative new products in the online gaming industry, invented a solution to improve donations to homeless and hungry people using Ethereum, and once was an extra in the Martha Stewart made-for-TV movie starring Cybill Shepherd. My companies BlockCrushr Labs and TokenClub have just joined the Techstars family through the new Techstars Anywhere accelerator.

Some highlights: In 2006, I developed a system of banner ads in which you could free-play common casino games (blackjack, poker, slots) and webmasters who ran affiliate sites could configure their own affiliate link you could click if you wanted to "play for real".

I went on to work with E3WD and World Casino Directory, eventually becoming CEO of that company, and along with my team developed the world's biggest directory of land based casinos, one of the premiere news sites in the gaming industry, and more than 200 other web sites in the space. That company was acquired in 2016.

We also built a whole host of custom dashboards and technology behind the scenes including innovative industry-first valuation models I'm very proud of!

After that I went on to spin up and run Atlantic Canada's first corporate innovation lab for the Atlantic Lottery Corporation (eastern Canada's $1 billion/year state lottery), and along with the very talented folks on my team and in the Innovation group, developed industry first products like Winvelope, a monthly subscription-by-mail service for scratch tickets, and PoolParty, an app that makes it easy and fun to play and manage lottery pools.

TokenClub was born out of the insight that although ICOs are revolutionizing fundraising and venture capital worldwide, individually many ICOs are garbage and they can be time consuming and difficult to participate in. You've got to wade through and vet a sea of ICOs, get on the whitelist, get your transaction in at the right time, with the right amount of gas - it can really be a full-time job.

We created TokenClub to curate the best projects and give people a "virtual subscription box" of quality tokens with real utility, with one easy monthly payment.

Last year, the World Government Summit held the largest blockchain hackathon to date, the Blockchain Virtual GovHack, as part of their World GovTechioneers Race. We developed and entered our Hypergive system to the competition, and out of more than 1100 entrants around the world, our team (myself, Andrew Redden and Brian Jeffcock) were invited along with 3 other teams to attend the 2017 World Government Summit in Dubai, UAE, where we were given the 2017 Year of Giving Award by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

Some of the factors we look at are: Adoption trajectory, quality of team, code and project, functionality/utility, transformational potential. In most cases you have to understand the underlying technology, business case, and think on a second or third-order level to evaluate this potential.

Sure. The system is called Hypergive, and it was born out of two insights. One, that we live in a cashless society - even if you want to give money to someone on the street, usually you can't because you're not carrying cash. Two, there is a lot of donor cynicism around where the money goes that inhibits generosity. We tackled these problems by creating a system of crowdfunded digital food wallets, that are basically business card-sized pieces of cardboard with a unique QR code on them. Partner organizations can issue them to people in need, and they can take the cards to a participating retailer to redeem for food or other necessities of life. The cards are uniquely tied to each individual with photo ID on the blockchain so they can't be sold, stolen or traded. Each participating retailer has an inexpensive smartphone running the Hypergive merchant app which they use to scan the card and validate the person and the transaction. Cards can be crowdfunded on the Hypergive web site using common payment methods such as credit cards, debit cards and other digital wallet services.

Thanks for the question! In general I think the best thing to do is to get involved, in whatever that means for you. Being literate with blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies and tokens will serve you well as we move forward into the future. Learn and keep learning!

That's a really great question. It's tricky for the biggest economic powers because by the nature of cryptocurrencies, they have the potential to take the power away from individual countries, governments and other actors to set monetary policy or have the impact and control they're used to. That being said, it may not be a choice. I often compare cryptocurrencies and traditional finance to Napster/MP3s and the record labels. What the record labels should have done was embrace MP3s and digital far earlier than they did. They dug in their heels and refused to embrace the new paradigm. This is a whole different thing but there are important parallels.

Isn't it an issue that very few of the crypto currencies are actually used as such - as currency to actually buy something? Why do you think that is and is it detrimental? Would it help their wider acceptance if they were to become more practical?

Thanks for the question! Usability and adoption are two areas where cryptocurrencies need to grow to fulfil their full promise. They're also linked - as usability increases, so will adoption. I don't think we're at the tipping point yet, but we're already seeing significant progress. Literacy with cryptocurrencies continues to grow among the general populace, and over time more people and businesses will become comfortable with paying and receiving payment for goods and services through cryptocurrencies. Wallets, POS terminals and e-commerce flows will improve and there will be more "on-ramps" to crypto. The whole thing will just continue to become more user-friendly. The dApp economy will also help drive transactionality forward as more blockchain-native projects come online.

Great question. So much of the focus around blockchain today is about the price of various cryptocurrencies or tokens. But we believe blockchain technology has the power to make people's lives better in a number of ways and drive innovation beyond just financial markets. For example, blockchain technology can provide identification for some of the world's poorest citizens, provide banking for the unbanked, enable machine-to-machine (M2M) co-ordination and value transmission at scale - imagine being in your autonomous vehicle and having it refueled by another autonomous vehicle, at speed, automatically, and the transaction is settled with blockchain tech! Personal data and health records will be secured and controlled by the individual - the list goes on and on.

It certainly has that potential. Ethereum was what really activated me in the blockchain space to begin with. Bitcoin had been on my radar and I had been using it a bit but when Ethereum was released, that's what really got me going. The idea of Smart contracts and the Ethereum World Computer blew my mind.

You can do more with Ethereum from a functionality perspective, but there is a place in crypto for different use cases. Bitcoin has a longer history and proven itself to be resilient and with a low attack surface. At the end of the day, I am an "Ethereum guy" though.

Great question. On paper, a CEO has 3 jobs - communicate the company's strategy internally and externally, conduct the primary recruiting and hiring decisions, and make sure the company doesn't run out of money.

Beyond that, people often have a stereotype in their mind of what a successful CEO is (the extroverted, charismatic CEO). However the data has shown that there are many ways to be a successful CEO and those things aren't necessarily correlated with success. In my opinion, it's important to have drive and resilience, be an active communicator and team builder, and be able to visualize the future.

If you want to go deeper on this, I highly recommend reading Good to Great by Jim Collins if you haven't already - it's one of my favorite books on business and leadership.

AMAfeed is an AMA Search Engine.
We crawl the entire Internet looking for good sources of AMA's and bring them to you in a simple, easy to use interface.
We also own and operate a large network of dedicated AMA Event channels.
Each of our AMA Event channels encourages open, authentic, candid discussions that empowers our community to gain a better understanding of their chosen topics of interest via the AMA Event format.

All copyrights, trademarks, product names and logos appearing on the site are the property of their respective owners.

AMAfeed is an AMA Search Engine.
We crawl the entire Internet looking for good sources of AMA's and bring them to you in a simple, easy to use interface.
We also own and operate a large network of dedicated AMA Event channels.
Each of our AMA Event channels encourages open, authentic, candid discussions that empowers our community to gain a better understanding of their chosen topics of interest via the AMA Event format.

All copyrights, trademarks, product names and logos appearing on the site are the property of their respective owners.

By continuing to use this site you consent to the use of cookies on your device,
our Privacy policy and Terms of service.
You can change your Cookie Settings at any time but parts of our site will not function correctly without them.